New company rises from coach firm ashes

Deirdre Brown has launched a new coach tour company, Deirdre Brown Travel, just months after the family firm founded by her father, Eddie Brown, was liquidated having been taken over and asset-stripped by an offshore company based in Barbados. (S)

The Brown name is back on the roads of North Yorkshire, with the launch a new coach tour company called Deirdre Brown Travels.

Deirdre Brown was managing director of the coach company her father founded in 1949, Eddie Brown Tours, until it was bought by a secretive Barbados-based company called Island Fortitude.

Ms Brown agreed to stay on and head up the company, but the new owners immediately put her on gardening leave. They failed to turn the company around and placed it into voluntary liquidation last December.

Ms Brown has come out fighting. “I’m setting up again and getting back to what I’m best at,” she said.

“The aim is to grow it back to being the best holiday and day excursion company in North Yorkshire again. I’m determined – they’re not stopping me!”

She plans to run coach holidays throughout the UK and continental Europe – the first trip sets off for southern Ireland on September 29 – and has already held a couple of open days for new and former clients.

“There’s been a huge amount of interest,” she said. “It’s just crazy – it’s all happened so quickly. And the support has been phenomenal.”